Cold
by Hi10000000
Summary: She's dying. A vermin and his dying companion begs Redwall to let them in, but they refuse with cold, cold eyes. (I really do seem to like protesting the prejudice in Redwall, it seems. Typical Hi10000000 story.)


**A/N: Warning: uber-angstiness up ahead. It's snowing. **

**Summary: this vermin's girlfriend is dying, and he's begging the Redwallers to let them in and save her. But they keep refusing. Why?**

**Because they are vermin. **

_Her smile. Her laugher. Her life, oh so bright and shining to me. Her very soul is a beacon of light for me in this eternal darkness, leading me along the way. But now it's fading, fading, and still they won't open the door and let her frozen body taste warmth, life. _

_They won't open the door and save her, even as she bleeds in the snow._

Cold.

Suddenly, all there is was cold.

Cold, cold snow. Cold, white snow. Cold, cold eyes.

Snow fell around him in flurries, spinning, spinning, spinning. Swirls of white snow, falling from a cold, clear sky, blanketing the world in white. Quiet, billowing snow, tumbling through the winter-laced air, spinning and dancing in the soft zephyrs of breeze. Soft, quiet snow, falling silently, falling without a sound, each flake drifting down, down, down with a thousand others as insignificant as itself, then hitting the blanketed, cold ground and fading away without a trace.

Fading.

She had always loved the snow. She had always smiled when it fell, not loudly, joyfully, like she did in the carefree summer days, but softly, quietly, with all the beauty and grace of the falling snow. She had always been outside when it fell, watching it spiral towards the ground with wide eyes reflecting the clear sky. Although the cold bit her and scratched her and burrowed within her skin each time she went into the frigid winter world outside, she always just smiled and continued to watch the snow fall.

_"Don't you get cold?" he had asked her._

_"Yes." Her sigh floated away on the wind as a soft puff of vaporized breath. _

_"Then why do you stay outside to watch the snow fall?"_

_At this she had just smiled. _

_"Because I know that you will come to share your warmth with me, and the warmth from knowing that is enough." _

_And just then, the warmth of her smile and her loving eyes had been strong enough to protect them both from the cold. _

He had promised to protect her from the cold of the snowfall. He had promised to share his warmth with her when the world simply got too cold. He had promised to stay by her side and shield her from the arctic winds of the cold, judgmental winter, the cold, judgmental world.

He had promised her.

But now, as he sat, stunned, in the snow beside her still, bleeding form, all he could see was cold, cold from every direction, cold closing in on them, cold that was too strong for his meager warmth to keep at bay. Cold, cold of the snow, cold of the wind, cold of the broken feeling he got from realizing he broke his promise, and cold from their eyes.

Their eyes. They stared down at the two huddled figures in the snow indifferently, seeing all from the top of their tall, red wall. Redwallers.

"Please let us in!" he begged. "Please! She's dying!" Then, his voice broke and he collapsed in the snow, the weight of those terrible words crashing down onto his fragile soul.

_She's dying._

But their eyes remained cold. Cold, like the snow whose frigidness slowly stole her life away. Cold, like the prejudice they had embedded in their hearts against her bleeding form lying in the snow and his crying eyes. Cold, like this cold, cruel world that they lived in, filled with prejudice and judgment, littered with bloodstains and dead bodies among the snow.

Cols, cold eyes blowing snow into his crying face.

Crying.

Beside him, her still body lay, looking so tiny, so frail, bleeding away an already dimming life in pools of red blood. She lay in the snow, once passionate and bright eyes dimmed, once lively paws stilled. Blood from her frail body seeped into the white, pure snow, staining it red as despair, red as the panic in his heart. She was dying, he knew. She was dying, fading away like a tiny snowflake, unmissed by the entire world except for him. She was dying, and every single precious second that dripped away and melted into the past was another drop of her blood spilled onto the cold white snow, another drop of her life faded away. As her body became colder and colder, stiller and stiller, the cold crept deeper into his heart, freezing it with icy horror.

"Please!" he howled again, desperately, feeling more tears slide down his face and freeze in the cold from the snow and the cold from their eyes. "At least save her!"

But their eyes flashed cold and unforgiving again, almost as if shocked and appalled by the sheer sight of two lowly vermin sullying their precious Abbey's doorstep with red blood and ugly tears. Cold, cold eyes. Uncaring eyes. Eyes that did not care for the fact that her blood was seeping into the white snow, eyes that did not care for the fact that she was dying.

Dying.

_She's dying. _

He felt more tears slide down his frozen face, dripping through his fur and freezing into silver crystalline droplets of ice. His tears fell from his crying, broken eyes, almost as if the cold from their eyes had wounded his heart beyond repair, silver blood leaking out form the scars and falling from his eyes as tears. He cried shamelessly in the snow, knowing that he was no more than a poor, sniveling vermin in their prejudiced, indifferent eyes, knowing that his tears would not bring any warmth to her still body, only more cold.

Cold.

Yet, despite all his cries, all his screams, all his tears, their eyes still remained cold.

Cold.

_She's dying. _

_She's dying. _

_She's dying, you know. _

_She's dying!_

"She's dying!" he screamed at them, suddenly, angrily. The icy cold in his heart was beginning to spread, spreading frigid tendrils of ice through his body, his mind. Suddenly, the icy cold that froze his heart into a lump of horror was screaming, snarling, searing him with hatred, hatred for them, hatred for their snotty, proud, upturned faces, hatred for their cold, uncaring eyes blowing snow into his. "She's dying!" he screamed at them again, wanting them to suffer, wanting them to feel guilt rip their heart apart as cold ripped his, wanting them to feel his words puncture their souls, stab them with daggers of ice, rip them with sharpened guilt, his anger. "She's dying! Don't you care?"

_Don't you care?_

_Don't you?_

_No._

They didn't care.

For their eyes remained cold and their faces remained impassive and the snow continued to blow in from all directions, stinging his face with fragments of ice. He felt his tears freeze and fall to the ground as a frozen silver sphere of ice, then watched them shatter into a billion pieces. Still they watched, impassive, uncaring, eyes cold, cold, cold, blowing more stinging snow into his face and bringing more tears.

Tears. Crying.

_She's dying. _

_She's dying._

_She's dead._

And then they turned away and left.

They just turned away, turned their backs to the pitiful scene in front of them and left. They left, retreating back into their abbey of warmth and light and life. They turned away from him, from her and her fading life, turned away and left them in the snow to die.

_She's dying._

_She's dead. _

And then, all there was in this cold, cold world was him, her broken, bleeding, _dead_ body, and the endless snow.

The endless snow.

At least the cold was less now, replaced by a numbing silence. At least they were gone, their cold, cold eyes left and no longer there to wound him with the sheer uncaring. At least all there was left was pure, white snow, burying him, her and the bloodstains that burned him, hurt him. At least all there was now is untouched white, spanning north, south, east west, endlessly in all directions, stretching and stretching till forevermore.

Now, all there was is snow. Piles, heaps of snow. Snow, burying all. Even as the snow buried their frozen bodies, more fell from the clear, frigid sky. Burying them, us, the whole wide world in windless white, masking the ugly truth. All there was is snow, falling, falling.

And there he was, suspended in a sea of cold white snow, floating, there yet not there. Shadows and light passed through his dying vision, and he felt himself fading, fading, fading like a tiny snowflake, unmissed by the entire world and their cold, cold eyes. Fading.

And then he saw.

He saw the endless fields of unmarked graves, the endless fields of fallen victims, the endless fields of dead bodies, dead people, refused by their cold, cold eyes and left to die in unmarked graves, buried by only the snow. He saw endless people, "vermin" just like him, refused at the gates that would bring salvation and left to succumb to the cold.

Cold.

This world is cold, so cold.

Cold, like their eyes. Their eyes were cold, are cold, and will be cold every time a cursed vermin comes begging to their gates, cold each time. Cold forever.

And the snow would fall, again and again, uncomplaining of the job it has of burying the unwanted bodies. Burying the unwanted bodies in a sea of cold.

**A/N: They died. **

**I used the word "cold" 74 times, apparently (according to Word, anyway.) Well, that makes 75. Talk about repetitive. **

**I'll leave it up to you as to why the female was injured. You can judge, assume something dreadful and nasty and evil like the Redwallers in this story, or you can not care. Either one is fine, really. **


End file.
